RICH TOWARD GOD // Mariah Story

Greed is never something that is easy for us to admit. Actually, finding the humility admit our own greed to ourselves can be the hardest part. It comes in so many forms that it can be difficult to identify at times--because it doesn't always look the same. Greed is considered an intense and selfish desire, especially when it comes to wealth or power. And it's easy to think that greed doesn't apply to us because we often see it is as only having to do with money, but it goes so much further than that. We can be greedy with our money, our time, our relationships, or maybe even our belongings. However big or small it may seem, greed is an issue that needs to be dealt with because it's a heart issue.

I have never really felt greedy when it came to money, so I was one of those people who felt it just didn't apply to me. But as Filmore was preaching Sunday evening, the Lord started to reveal areas in my heart that I needed to take a step back, re-examine and re-align. The closer I looked from a different perspective, the more I saw greed in other areas of my life. I realized that I can be greedy with my time, because sometimes I just don't feel like there is enough time in the day to get everything I need to done. And maybe too much of my time lately has been focused on me and less on others. I realized I can be greedy even with what I choose to give my attention to. When things seem to be going wrong, it's easy for me to pay more attention to myself and my problems instead of on others and how I can encourage them. Sometimes I might give my attention to some people in my life, more than others—the list goes on.

But here is the beauty I am seeing in all of this—even with all the things in my heart that I see wrong, it's still through a lens of love. It's the reality that God loves me so much that He wants to change me from the inside out, to make me the best possible version of myself. And having a soft and pliable heart gives Him the groundwork to come in and transform the soil of my heart. Out of the overflow of that will always come generosity.

The Bible calls us to be a generous kind of people because we serve a generous Father. When we hold Jesus on the throne of our hearts, our deepest desires will naturally be to see God's desires fulfilled in our life and greed won't even have a place to take root.